As I understand it a lot of aluminum was used as one of the roles it is to fill is as a minesweeper. I would be surprised if the LCS' had more than DD levels of armor.

Given what hAppens to aluminium when it interacts with fire, the (significant lack of) armor is irrelevant. Shes a deathtrap to her crew if she ever has to sail into harms way. Best of luck to her crews, and hopefully we can kill the LCS program before we build all 36 of them.

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Given what hAppens to aluminium when it interacts with fire, the (significant lack of) armor is irrelevant. Shes a deathtrap to her crew if she ever has to sail into harms way. Best of luck to her crews, and hopefully we can kill the LCS program before we build all 36 of them.

Oh yeah, I understand about that. Supposedly there are fire suppression and retardant systems, but I'm not so sure they can stand up to ship killing missiles.

I get why they used aluminium as you are going to be looking for magnetic mines, but I would have went with a more conventional ships with remotes for mine work.

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Given what hAppens to aluminium when it interacts with fire, the (significant lack of) armor is irrelevant. Shes a deathtrap to her crew if she ever has to sail into harms way. Best of luck to her crews, and hopefully we can kill the LCS program before we build all 36 of them.

Care to explain what you mean by that? If you think Aluminium burns in a fire, your wrong. it's a false rumour started after the falklands. Now Titanium alloy, thats a different matter.

Given what hAppens to aluminium when it interacts with fire, the (significant lack of) armor is irrelevant. Shes a deathtrap to her crew if she ever has to sail into harms way. Best of luck to her crews, and hopefully we can kill the LCS program before we build all 36 of them.

LCS was put on the back burner. It's why the Arleigh Burke class was restarted.

LCS was put on the back burner. It's why the Arleigh Burke class was restarted.

"Littoral...'

Modernize the sensors and propulsion and give it some CWIS if you must; but I've always felt a Fletcher would be better at all things 'Littoral' than anything like an LCS... (except minesweeping of course...)

If nothing else; the firestorm a Fletcher could put out should do plenty to discourage 'pirates' and 'revolutionary guard' types around the Arabian Sea...

Modernize the sensors and propulsion and give it some CWIS if you must; but I've always felt a Fletcher would be better at all things 'Littoral' than anything like an LCS... (except minesweeping of course...)

If nothing else; the firestorm a Fletcher could put out should do plenty to discourage 'pirates' and 'revolutionary guard' types around the Arabian Sea...

The LCS ships have a manpower complement one tenth a Fletcher and that is a selling point for the Navy. I would rather have the Fletcher as well, but I'm old school. :)

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As I understand it a lot of aluminum was used as one of the roles it is to fill is as a minesweeper. I would be surprised if the LCS' had more than DD levels of armor.

Aluminum has been used for a while, The Spruance class that I was on only had 1/2" corrugated aluminum for the superstructure. So When I was sitting at My console in the CIC I could be hit by a .50 Cal round.

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Modernize the sensors and propulsion and give it some CWIS if you must; but I've always felt a Fletcher would be better at all things 'Littoral' than anything like an LCS... (except minesweeping of course...)

If nothing else; the firestorm a Fletcher could put out should do plenty to discourage 'pirates' and 'revolutionary guard' types around the Arabian Sea...

When we were patrolling the Straights of Hormuz and Persian gulf back in 1985, our Captain would screw with them as they were hijacking commercial ships and kicking the crews off and taking the ships .

He had a color radar (same as used on merchant vessels) installed on the ship so we could go dark on emissions and appear as a merchant vessel on ELINT.

Edited February 4 by DESRON10

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Aluminum has been used for a while, The Spruance class that I was on only had 1/2" corrugated aluminum for the superstructure. So When I was sitting at My console in the CIC I could be hit by a .50 Cal round.

To me, that is too little armor. Ships should be immune to fire from a .50cal that was used on fighters. Heck, you could mount that on a tripod in canoe!

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A funny note, when they added the armoured box launchers for the Tomohawk's it made our ship so top heavy it listed to one side and the ship would almost capsize when making a high speed turn.

The solution they came up with was to put counter weight in our voids in the hull to keep her from turning over due to the weight of the ABL's wanting to flip the ship over.

Crazy. They should have stuck the armored box launchers on the edge of the hull down inside with the tops sticking out and had a hatch to vent exhaust so lower the top weight. I bet there were designs for something like that, but sticking them on top was easier and cheaper, but not safer.

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Crazy. They should have stuck the armored box launchers on the edge of the hull down inside with the tops sticking out and had a hatch to vent exhaust so lower the top weight. I bet there were designs for something like that, but sticking them on top was easier and cheaper, but not safer.

Thus the reason that Vertical Launch Systems were designed/used after the ABL's were installed on ships.